Vantage Points and Relays
by skywalker05
Summary: Drabbles from all parts of the ME universe. Lots of Shepard/Joker, other pairings may appear. 25. The fight with the clone was the first time EDI was ever completely divorced from the Normandy.
1. Nar Normandy

**Author's Note: **This story was supposed to be 100 words. You see how well that went.

After spending about two years of my life on Star Wars drabbles, I decided to do the same for the odds and ends of my Mass Effect ideas. These will range in length from 100 to 1000 words and cover nearly any character, genre, time, and pairing. Requests are always open.

This first one was requested by **Jericho-Is-Falling **over on DeviantArt, who wanted some **Kali. **Morose!FShep got in there too. I didn't want to specify who she's paired with, since part of the appeal of ME fanfic is being able to imagine it's your own PC they're talking about, but if you know me at all you know what I was thinking when I wrote it.

Enjoy, and please review!

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**Nar Normandy **

A quarian toddler wasn't the easiest creature to keep track of, not when she had an over-sized helmet and an even more over sized sense of curiosity, the combination of which made walking an adventure and stairs a disaster. Kal heard Misa'Reegar nar Normandy waddling down the stairs toward Engineering and panicked.

"Tali? Tali!"

But his wife was at a computer station somewhere, and she'd asked him to watch the kid while she worked, so he headed down the stairs as determined as if he'd been given an order. Misa would be okay. She hadn't fallen—he would have heard that, and her balance was too good anyway, even at this age—she'd inherited that from her momma—

She wasn't on the stairs. Kal cursed under his breath as he followed the flight down, the miasma of his mask's atmosphere floating in front of him and tainting the Normandy red. Even with the war over, there were so many dangers to a kid. He'd never thought about how many things had sharp corners before.

But it was worth all the worry, all the chasing. _Keelah_ it was worth it.

Where _was _that grub?

"Misa?"

"Don't worry, Kal," said a woman's voice from the room at the bottom of the stairs. "I've got her."

Tension seemed to bleed out of him. He turned the last corner to see Shepard sitting on the makeshift bunk strung between the ship's struts, Misa giggling on her lap. The little quarian's bootied feet swung gently against Shepard's legs as the human shifted her in her arms.

Kal approached, smiling. "Don't mean to bother you, commander. She's been walking everywhere lately, like she just wants to explore the whole galaxy from this ship." Misa raised her arms toward him as he came closer, and he searched for the happiness hidden behind the orange fog in her mask. Shepard let her go almost reluctantly, and Kal settled his child against his shoulder.

"It's a great place to explore." Shepard smiled.

"That it is, ma'am."

Kal rubbed Misa's back, comforting her at the same time as he checked the seams and tubes of her suit for any damage. Usually quarian women wore decorated veils over their air tubes, but Misa was too young to care how she looked, so the all-important tubes had been ordered into a neat braid behind her head like behind his. She whined as she tried to rest her head comfortably against his shoulder, and he patted her back, wishing she could breathe freely but also simply so glad that she existed. Fatherhood was a confusing thing, amazing and worrying all at the same time, like a concoction that made the head spin. He was determined to do right by Misa, by Tali.

He looked down at Shepard. He'd gotten much closer to her since the Normandy began the tradition of seasonally joining the Fleet. She was still an officer, still a hero, but they'd shared enough drinks that he was comfortable talking to her. "Do you ever think of having kids?"

She looked down at her legs, and he thought suddenly that he'd stepped into women's territory and shouldn't have asked. Her voice was confident and level as she changed the subject. "I always liked how quarians named themselves after ships." Her musing was too important to her for him to interrupt; he could see that in her green eyes. "It gives you a home, and a home that moves…can't ever really be left. I should be Shepard nar Normandy…no, vas Normandy?"

He did not know what her wistful expression meant, and liked that she was heading for conversation that would bring her emotions back onto solid ground. "'Nar' indicates the place you were born."

She smiled a little, grew a little sadder at the same time. "Nar Arcturus."

She stood up, one hand curled around a nub of wall as if to claim it, the palm paling. Kal knew that she was usually curious about other species, and he wished that he could explain to her quarian expressions that would actually be useful, visible. All the small beautiful things—the quarian blush, the shading of irises as emotions changed, the thin gills at the back of Tali's neck—were hidden by their pressure suits. Both humans and quarians had lost these nuances of beauty.

"There would be complications," Shepard said calmly as he followed her up the stairs, "if we tried for children."

Misa's warmth glowed gradually from her suit to Kal's she draped her neck over his shoulder. He kept walking, silent like a good soldier.

"Don't worry," Shepard said. "It's why I come to the Fleet sometimes; to be reminded that even people who don't have a home can create one."

In the upper level of Engineering, Kal called out to Tali again and she appeared. "Oh, you've got her!"

Misa reached out to put her stubby arms around her mother's neck, her reach not long enough to have to worry about the thick cords of tube beneath Tali's cowl.

"She's fine," Kal reassured, close enough to his wife that Misa leaned to make a bridge between them. "She's fine."


	2. Lab Work

**A/N: **This one was requested by **Jericho-Is-Falling**, who wanted some Miranda/TIM. This isn't quite a pairing but I do hope it's appropriately creepy.

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Lab Work

** Yesterday had been **wetwork but today involved only the computer scan grids, and Miranda was glad; washing machines couldn't get the bloodstains out on their own. Shepard lay in the stasis field wrapped like a mummy. The body's temperature was important down to the degree. To Miranda, Wilson, and the med techs, this manifested as a barely noticeable, lukewarm room ambiance.

Most internal systems were functional enough that they'd need to up the airflow soon, but Shepard's brain was still sending out no more than it had in the beginning; little blips like the sense centers dreaming. It was one of the annual report days, so she told Wilson to monitor life support and pause the scans while she met with the Illusive Man.

Sometimes he visited in person, but more often the holosuite was their only means of connection, as was the case today. He stood in the light-paneled false office and abandoned his chair to stand in front of her instead as the hologrid faded, a cigarette hanging unlit in his hand.

"You are making progress."

"We are," she replied confidently. "Shepard will be ready on schedule."

"Good. And all of my Lazarus operatives are ready as well?"

"Of course. Did you expect otherwise?"  
He paced back toward the office backdrop—walking out into space. "I have assigned people to resurrect the dead. I expected some complications—religion, temperament, or simply weak stomachs. I must be sure my employees are capable."

"They are. We'll keep an eye on Wilson, but he does his job."

"He should be too assured of his position to want to compromise it. He is paid well. Loyalty is the first prerequisite for a good operative. The second…" A gesture with the cigarette, as natural to him as a pull. His fingers were wrinkled with age but showed sinewy strength. "…might be called fear by simpler people, but I know—you know—that fear is really only a judge of alertness. People fear what they do not expect."

Miranda did not know what to say to this. The Illusive Man was usually more about business than about Yoda-like aphorisms. Was he training her to succeed him? Pride started to brew in her.

"You noticed that the hall lights were off, didn't you?"

"It was dim. I will tell maintenance to get them fixed. I could see."

"Could you." He took a lighter from his pocket and flicked the flame against the end of the cigarette. "I came on a special trip today to investigate how alert my employees were. I will now have to move on to Wilson." He looked up. "End the program.

Cigarette smoke seemed to scratch at Miranda's nostrils after the sterilized lab. The holosuite faded, and it took a moment for her to even watch the edges of the Illusive Man to see why he wasn't fading. He wasn't. The smoke bit at her and he had been standing in the room all along hadn't he, first in the darkness behind her and then in front of her like an afterglow, and she had been too focused on herself. Hadn't he been there? Or he had come up behind her as the holo started, or—

It didn't matter. Inwardly she cursed herself as he walked past her into the hallway, pausing a moment to wrap his fingers around her shoulder and leave ash on her white suit.

"Alertness is important, Operative Lawson," the Illusive Man said as he walked down the hallway in front of her, on his way to investigate his other employees in surely less dramatic but equally intimidating manner. "It may serve you well in the future."


	3. Beneath the Skin

**A/N: ****The-Shady-Lady **of deviantArt wanted some Saren. I was always curious about why he looked the way he did, so different from other turians. As you can see, these drabbles are going to vary in length hugely.

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Beneath the Skin

A wasting disease took half his weight and most of the keratin from his face when he was ten. Saren doesn't attribute his disfigurement to his stark views of the geth and Sovereign, but he would readily admit that it made an impact in his life. _Impact _is too quick a word, really, for the thing that left piston-shaped bone visible behind the plates of his jaw, that scoured at the meat of his cheeks until the curve of the cranial spikes was visible, that gave his skin an unhealthy blue tang. When he sees Shepard sometimes he is left wondering what she'd look like desiccated, and whether humans ever think about what is under turian plating until they look at him and find out. _It might be hard to reconcile Garrus' face with mine_, he would tell her, _but underneath it's all there the same. We're all skeletons. I'm bone beneath keratin, you're bone beneath melanin. I just show it. _


	4. We

**A/N**: **The-Shady-Lady **also wanted some Legion. I expected this to be more about stalking and the N7 armor, and maybe that'll appear in a later drabble.

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We

"The quarians were our progenitors, but many other platforms have come online since then. We created ourselves."

"But you…all of you. Thousands of geth, right? You're unique." Shepard leaned against the electric-warm wall of the AI core, trying to figure out where to look when she was talking to Legion. His 'eye' left red afterimages when she blinked, as if she'd looked into the sun. The flaps that passed for his eyebrows were distractingly mobile, but she felt that looking at them while he talked was like staring at someone's shoulder because you didn't want to meet their eyes. Finally her eyes settled on the N7 plating welded to his chest.

"Unique?" he replied. "How can we be unique when we all meld? To be unique is to be alone."

"Do I know what that's like," Shepard muttered.

"Your audio input has been overridden by the background hum, Shepard-Commander. Please repeat."

"Never mind. I mean, you _are _unique. You can speak."

"We can speak because of our complexity."

Shepard shook her head. Maybe that was the big difference between synthetics and organics. However, it was also true that organics were smarter in groups…just not so predictably.

"Thanks for the information." She turned to go.

"Likewise. Your curiosity has been processed."

**They've never really **thought about it before. Organics _are _smarter in groups. That's part of why Legion waited to see whether Shepard would reach the core of the derelict Reaper—he wanted to see how organics could possible coordinate. The more creative of his platforms compared them to hanar, all separate tentacles somehow mysteriously falling in the same direction. But this, they realize, is because they're still thinking of people as platforms. Shepard is truly distinct from her crew. She can't share their thoughts or know their optimal functions. But somehow, she still manages to keep them together and alive. She manages to show they different ways of processing the world.

They are legion, and, although they didn't have words for it before, they are many.


	5. Paragon

**A/N**: **The-Shady-Lady ** also wanted some Shepard/Garrus, "Maybe doing something for Mass Effect 2 when he gets half his face blown/burned off." This is my first intent character study of him and I had fun with it. Rated **T **for a brief mention of the general grunginess of Omega. My opinion of him ranges daily, but I still admit he's my second-favourite.

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** Paragon **

Archangel saw the world in good and evil, blue and red, black and white.

He worked with many women in his mercenary days, most hard-eyed and defensive. In that regard they were the same as the men, really, armored and armored. But women in the slums knew that there were things worse than death for them. (Red.) There were for men too, but that was rarer. Less accepted. Archangel treated all genders and species the same; gave them the same mistrust they gave him. (Red.)

He wasn't sure where to fit Shepard in. She'd died on him, after all (red)—proving once again that Spectre meant very little in wartime. Titles were given respect by soft Councilors, not by bullets and vacuum. (Red.) She'd also returned looking a lot like any of the mercs—hard-eyed and shooting. He'd grazed her with a pressure shot to see what she would do, to give some vindictive, sad, proud part of him the satisfaction of being able to do something about whether she lived or died. (Red.)

She killed the krogan warlord with a fist to his eye and a bulletspray to his hearts. (Red.) Garrus knew his composure had to be all business now, knew (that she couldn't die now, that would just be so anticlimactic and _idiotic_, he could send her into the ductwork and she would be alright) that she saw him as Archangel.

Except when the gunship rose up like a clumsy vulture tipping on the windcurrents and waiting for its prey to fall, Garrus felt in the bloodhaze the cold metal of the apartment floor beneath his cheek. (Red—flayed skin feels nothing like the world usually does through turian chitin, is this what humans feel like every time they touch something, so soft and biting—) She kneels down beside him. He is in and out of consciousness (mostly out).

She brushes a hand across his forehead like she will against his scars so many months later, and he can close his eyes. This is not a touch with fear or mistrust in it, this is not flinty. She is not a mercenary woman, and she is not dead.

(Blue.)


	6. Debriefing

**A/N**: **Iofiel **wanted some renegadeShep/TIM. I have to apologize for the briefness and vagueness of this: it was honestly all I could come up with. I don't really see TIM as a softie. lol But I did get some rambling about quantum entanglement and the awesome holographic office, so all is not lost.

Reviews make me as happy as...a happy thing.

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**Debriefing**

"So you did it. Kept the Collector base intact." He walked around her, shoes making no sound on the variegated floor. It was strange for her that he would step out form behind his floating screens, would risk disrupting the field of her hologram with his own; but then, he knew the quantum entanglement machine better than she did. He knew all sorts of entanglement and probability, about bodies orbiting each other from the far distances of space. He asked, "Why?"

She kept her recreated face stony. "It could be useful. It could be another weapon."

"Oh, I know," he murmured. "Useful." His shoulder brushed hers and the holo fields arced, creating for a moment a hole in the office-universe through which she could see the silver blankness of Normandy walls.


	7. All The Things That Haven't Stopped Us

**A/N: **I wrote this as part of an upcoming fic, but it didn't match the feel of the rest, so...I guess this collection really is the odds-and-ends bin. I suppose this would be called one-sided Shoker, with me trying to get his voice down. Maybe there'll be more to it in the future._

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_

**All The Things That Haven't Stopped Us...And One That Has **

Shepard has quested through what feels like every world in the 'verse and they've come up barren, leaving the path straight and cold in front of her. Reaper IFF. It's next and it's the beginning of the end.

He was at the beginning of every other end, so of course she goes to him.

He's giving the Normandy his attention, watching and reading her.

Shepard stands beside him feeling the tilt of the floor beneath her boots. She starts, "It seems like you're the only person here who hasn't tried to propose to me."

He looks back at her, glib. "Huh. Well, I'm sure you don't want a diseased paramour."

She takes a deep breath. "It hasn't stopped most of us. Thane's got Kepral's, I've got burn scars. Samara has Ardat-Yakshi genes. Tali can't sleep. Kelly has scale itch. Gah."

"Wow, ah commander? Has anyone ever told you how much you don't look on the bright side of things?"

"But I just mean, it's not, you know, stopping them." _That bright enough for you, mister? _

"Cool." He turns back to the ship. There's _whatever _written in every line of his shoulders, apathy she wants to brush away like cobwebs. But it just keeps coming back.

She's standing there blinking. There's only one way to save this awkward silence.

"…I should go."


	8. The Night Before the Endgame

**A/N: Sharem **requested "Kaiden is on the Citadel and hears about the SR2 going through the Omega-4 relay." Sorry this isn't much more than that; it didn't give me any plot. I'm no Shenko shipper, but his puppy-dog infatuation with her is undoubtedly part of his character. _

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**The Night Before the Endgame **

He remembers the first time she came here, when they leaned toward the stronger-than-glass windows and he said humans have all the best resources. _Resources. _What addled part of his brain thought calling beautiful woman a _resource_, as if you had to mine for them, was a good idea?

(Remembering Ashley and Liara and _Shepard _he thinks maybe sometimes you did have to mind for them. Had to sift through the common metals.)

Now, Kaiden Alenko walks along the Presidium. He has given his report about Horizon to the Council. They have discussed and bickered and committee'd.

That's what they always do. But Shepard…

He can almost see the ship in the sky. _That _flat-winged barque could be the Normandy. _That _spark trailing twin meteor tails could be her, or could be some random cargo scow on its way to Illium. You don't get to know when you're here on the ground.

_What's she thinking? What's she seeing? Who's she touching?_

He looks down and clenches his teeth and _won't let _the biotic corona flare down his back, because _nonono _this is the Citadel, not a battlefield.

Kaiden Alenko leans against the railing and thinks about Horizon. Horizons. The stars keep setting eternally as the Citadel turns and Shepard is out among them somewhere, and no matter what he said and she said and the silence between them said on Horizon, he won't stop looking for her.

Some resources are just that precious.


	9. Spectral

**A/N: **Warning! Spoilers for the Shadow Broker DLC! Also I wrote this at like 3 in the morning after breathlessly playing through half of LotSB, so let it serve as my review of the thing...but it may not necessarily be the greatest piece of literature you've ever read.

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**Spectral**

Vasir's Charge sends her careening across the plaza, blue contrails racing in her wake. Shepard takes just a second to find her direction before she finds the power inside herself and Charges after.

Suddenly Vasir is _right there_, her mottled face filling up Shepard's vision, and it's almost too close to use the gun. Vasir is shooting across a fountain at Garrus anyway, so Shepard lifts her elbow and cracks Vasir across the face once, twice, another time under the asari's solar plexus before Vasir is gone in a web of light.

(It's like something from an old story. Rivals harnessing dark powers, singularity-powers that warp the world and leave it spinning, Dopplering, going down the drain.

Shepard doesn't usually fall into biotics this easily, doesn't usually use them so much that her skin starts to prickle beneath her armor and her breath, every time she manages to pull in a lungful of the cold, filtered air, seems a shock. Now, though, she has to keep up with Vasir, and the world has become her thoughts of trajectory and velocity and _I _can _keep up. _Shepard still is awash in the success in the skycar.

She's not usually the one doing the piloting. That's Joker's job, his place, his pride. Never mind the fact that this is a _taxi_, Shepard spends a ridiculous amount of time looking for the _go faster _button, and the thing is armed with a _fee meter_—the helmsman wouldn't be caught dead in it, but Shepard does all right.)

Vasir levitates away again, and Shepard follow. They're standing on almost the same square of floor for a moment before Vasir gives a parting shot that rings off Shepard's shoulder before she disappears.

There's meters between them now and gunships coming in over the side of the plaza, so Shepard turns her attention away. Garrus and Liara happen to be a path away, gathering to fire; Shepard feels like she's watching over them as she takes sights in the sky.

(There's something unsettling about fighting a Spectre. She thought she could trust them after Saren, like maybe another one would be able to sit down with her and say _yeah, I know what it's like. _She can picture herself and Vasir having tea together and telling war stories. No—these would be remarkable because they wouldn't be war stories. She'd tell the asari how she counts the stars and catnaps; Vasir would tell her about a human boyfriend (or something) and they'd watch the news together.

But no. Joker makes comments, sometimes, about how he doesn't trust the Spectres. Shepard thinks wryly that she'll get an _I told you so _out of this one.

What is it about power that makes people go their own way?

She answers herself quickly. That's just what power does.)

The trail of murky purple blood ends by the softly curved railing overlooking Illium's shine and bottomless drops. Vasir's voice sounds so much younger than her face and her uniform look. She speaks like someone born, raised and trained not by the Council, but by a strong moral code based on dust and dirt and the kind of discipline any thinking being has to have to survive. When Shepard tries to think of Vasir as the enemy, she finds that she must think of herself as a traitor too.

Shepard can't answer the question of whether Vasir is most like herself or most like Saren. When she thinks about it, she starts comparing herself to Saren- metal-boned, camera-eyed, killing for a higher power.

Vasir slumps to the side, graceful and simple.


	10. Inscription

A/N: Some Shepard/Joker. Rated T. I've had the idea of Shepard getting a Normandy tattoo for a while and then did some art of that and then this happened.

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**Inscription**

The armory is the inside of an eye. The iris is the faintly glowing, faintly humming engine core, and they are inside its nerves. It is looking away.

That's where she shows him, while Jacob is out still on the docks somewhere and the smog of Omega is still wafting its greasy rivulets of scent through the Normandy's halls. She trips the snap at the top of her uniform and shrugs the padded flightsuit stuff down to her hips before either of them have time to say anything. He draws in a breath and she turns away and shows him her shoulder. The aching, stinging surface of her shoulder. The air is cold against her skin left bare by the black shirt she wears underneath.

Then his breath changes. She could listen to no other sound for the rest of her life as long as she gets that hissing breath that started in surprise and ended in concern and awe and he's narrowing his eyes and tipping his head now, she knows it even though she's looking away. His lips are parted, slightly. He looks the most confused when he knows exactly what he's doing.

Joker trails warm fingers around the edges of the pain and she doesn't want to tell him to _be careful_, because if he knows anything he knows that. "This is…wow."

"I wanted her back with me," she says. "She's permanent now."

He's making tiny circles on the skin of her shoulder just below the little ink-painted Normandy ache.

(The hum of the ship is so comforting. Her and Tali; both of them couldn't sleep without it. The SR2 makes a deeper rumble.)

She says, "As long as this body is, anyway."

She's staring into the blue eye of the reactor core and waiting for it to blink.

He says, "She always comes back."

It's hard to tell what he says, sometimes; the words rustle together so. "What?"

"You came back. We all thought…but you came back."

She's about to lift her elbow back to scratch at the one spiderweb Lazarus scar that keeps persisting and shifting when he's suddenly _right there _and ruffling her hair just by being that close. He is, very quickly, pressing his lips against her shoulder and she is very quickly _okay with that—_

(The tattoo was from a grubby shop next to Aria's Afterlife, where the thin-eyed salarian artist knew the Normandy. He'd had veterans and citizens of the citadel tack it on their skin, although he had to look up a picture on the extranet to know all its shapes. The picture was from a news article Shepard had accessed shortly after she'd woken up. It was probably dangerous going to a man with a street-bought kit instead of a fancy derma-shop on Illium, but sometimes Shepard just didn't care about the body Cerberus had given her.) The needle ache was like a reflection against Joker's neck, echoing back, as he set his teeth against her shoulder.

The ship had brought them together and broken them and it was going to be with her forever, in her skin and in her sleep.

Later, he left the purpled skin around her new tattoo to run his palms across her cheeks and her forehead and she pressed her lips against his and opened the elevator door behind her and _everyone's gone, shore leave, everything is so very quiet—_

And she wondered, for just one moment as she ran her hands across his back and she felt him almost desperately spider his fingers against her and brush that mark, one fingertip-worth of thin pigment-pain, whether he was really in love with her or just the ship—


	11. The Uses of Heroes

A/N: Inspired by **diraemythos** on deviantArt, who did a picture of Kaidan mourning over a holographic advertisement featuring Shepard.

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**the uses of heroes  
**

_"Did you know they used you in the recruitment ads?"_

"Give me a minute."

"Okay." And Joker sat down next to one of the railings keeping the stars at bay and closed his eyes because he'd seen her too. He didn't need a second look.

Kaiden needed the second look. (He hadn't gotten it over Alchera, after all.) Joker watched Kaidan's boots walk away. Poor lovestruck biotic.

Not that it wasn't _weird _seeing her face up on that hologram, advertising _Honor _and _Duty _and the _Alliance. _Not that there wasn't something _wrong _about the fact that the recruiters were using her. She'd sold her body to them and they had the rights to her face, to honoring her for saving them all, to plaster her all over the Citadel on _movie posters_ and fuzzy mockups so ripped-off you could barely tell what her face looked like.

(It was the second anniversary. One year ago, Sovereign had crashed twenty klicks from here. Everyone paid their respects, although usually it was separate. Garrus hadn't been heard from in months. But Joker hadn't left the Citadel in a long time, and having Kaidan around had been a good excuse for him to wander the wards with some measure of safety.

And it was nice not to have to mourn alone.)

Joker looked up. Morbid curiosity. Also _am I going to have to keep him from making a scene…_

Not a scene, really; more a tableaux, and one Joker wouldn't have interrupted for the world.

Kaidan slumped, folded, sighed out one weary shipwreck breath and grasped for the hologram like he could hold it, like he could touch her hair posed as she was with a stiff salute and a stony set to lightly painted lips. He was trying to catch light in his fingers, he was bracing himself on the silver screen of projector like maybe he could fall into the image, and people were walking past like nothing was happening. Like it was _a year ago it happened _and _she's gone_ and _there's nothing we can do _and _stupid lovesick biotic…_

In the time it took Joker to stand up, Kaiden had broken. His shoulders slumped like they never had on the battlefield.

Joker put a hand on his elbow. "Come on." He couldn't meet Kaidan's eyes; the purple evening of the Citadel was nice and distracting instead. Kaidan didn't resist.

Two faltering steps from both of them, and then Joker felt the hairs on his arms stand up as a purple corona cracked around Kaidan, just for a second in which a few heads turned to stare. Joker stopped and stood there. He wasn't sure why he wasn't afraid of the biotics except that there were other things to be more afraid of right now. Shepard was still staring patriotically at a spot above their heads, visible from every angle. Serious and emotionless like she'd been on the Normandy (sometimes.)

Kaidan pressed his left hand to his forehead and rubbed. At the L2 ache, or maybe he was hiding tears. Joker looked away again. He wasn't here for moral support.

(He sure wasn't here to be leaned on either, but then what did that leave?)

Clear of biotic cloud and back to his unbroken soldier walk, Kaidan progressed slowly down the promenade. They'd go somewhere else and remember her. (They'd probably go somewhere else and drink.)

Left a step behind with one hand free and the other on a crutch Joker turned to the hologram, distorted as it was now by the static of being at the wrong angle. He straightened up and gave _honorable, dutiful_, _dead _Alliance Commander Shepard a crisp salute. He blinked and shook his head and blinked his eyes, because the static was making them water with the strain; same thing must have happened to Kaidan.

He turned and moved on, following the biotic's squared shoulders.


	12. Sleep

_The next ten or so stories are from a prompt generator provided by **virusq**_. _It was intended for one-sentence stories, which is why they're so short._

_First Prompt: Angst (Tali) _

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**Sleep**

It was true that she couldn't sleep with all the silence in the Normandy, curled as she was in a silent pod and the strangeness of her own skin. She felt light without the suit, not only physically but as if maybe all the knowledge she'd gained on her Pilgrimage so far had gone away.

But then Shepard left...no..._died_, and suddenly she couldn't sleep _without _the noise.


	13. Death

_Prompt: Death Fic (Joker, M!Shepard) _

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**Death **

"Did you have to-"

Jack pauses in the entrance to the bridge, her shoulders high and quivering under the blue shapes of tattoo. "It's the way it goes, Shepard. You want to back out now?"

Her posture goes from twitchy-excited to smooth-dangerous and she eases back toward him, staring with those dark eyes. He shakes his head, bares his teeth to stretch the Lazarus scars across his cheek.

"Then let's do this."

She steps onto the bridge and he follows his pirate queen, carefully keeping his boot treads out of the puddle of red blood on the floor.


	14. Dark

_Prompt: Dark (Grunt, M!Shepard) _

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**Dark**

"Blast it, Grunt, what happened down here?" Logan Shepard peers out of the hallway into the pitch-black cargo hold.

The krogan's deep voice comes from inside, angry and grumbling. "It was in my way."

"The light was in your way?"

"Here, commander..." Kelly hands him the flashlight and Shepard takes it, shining it into the cargo hold.

Seeing Grunt standing at his full height, head up and glass tinkling down between the plates of his shoulders, Shepard realizes that the ceiling strip light was, in fact, in the way.


	15. Helpful Advice

_Prompt: Baby Fic (Garrus, EDI) _

* * *

**Helpful Advice**

Garrus sighs. The little blue ball that is the ship's AI pops into existence at the suggestion of a vocal command. Because it's pretty safe to emote to EDI and because he's encountering some emotions right now that feel way more important than any security measures, Garrus does so.

"I mean, I was just telling her about turian childcare. I told her about the usual nest, which is...agh, that's such a poor translation. It's just a crib. And I told her that the babies need stones to keep their gizzard healthy and he might cough up a stone once in a while. And then I said it was fine if we wanted to name him after her father, but she just...didn't take it well. I guess I should have explained it better."

EDI says, "I think that would be wise, Officer Vakarian."


	16. Comfort

_Prompt: Hurt/Comfort (Garrus, Kasumi) _

* * *

**Comfort**

"So, you worked for C-SEC?"

"Yeah."

"I took something from them once. What was it...I think it was a car."

"You took a _car_? From Citadel Security? When was this?"

"Oh, I'm sure you weren't on duty at the time.


	17. Advertisement

_Prompt: Crackfic (F!Shepard) _

* * *

**Advertisement**

"Huh." She looks dispassionately down at the blue speckles on the ground as Jack and Kasumi run ahead, firing at the snipers hidden in the abandoned buildings. "So they really did replace my blood with Tupari."


	18. Optimism

_Prompt: Three (Joker, EDI, Mordin) _

* * *

**Optimism**

"Didn't think to tell you about possible cure. Side effects, deadly. No need to know. Distraction."

"I disagree, Professor Solus. Jeff has a right to know about his own condition."

"But his condition is unchanging. No need to record my statement as fact. Consider context."

Joker, sitting on the table with his pants rolled up to his knees and his boots tipped over on the floor, looked back and forth between Mordin and the blue ball in the wall sconce. EDI had interrupted while Joker was in Mordin's office. Usually Chakwas would take care of Joker's physicals, but the doctor was struck with a cold herself and delegated the procedure to Mordin. The salarian worked efficiently, babbling to himself. And then EDI chose to ask about a little something Mordin had mentioned to Shepard earlier, about a cure for Vrolik's.

The air and the table was cold against Joker's skin. Stenciled on the wall behind one of Mordin's multiple workstations were letters Joker had never noticed before: Keep This Area Clean.

He stared at them as he said, "Would it work?"

Mordin laced his fingers together. "No. Would cause...catastrophic liver failure. Will continue to work, when I have time."

Joker shook his head.

Sure, it was a nice idea. But people tried cures. They tried them all the time, for him and for the people like him. There were organizations. Sure, maybe one genius salarian might do it. But it wasn't something to count on.

Joker shrugged. "It doesn't matter now, does it? The cure won't work. None of them before did either. So...you've made nothing worse...Good job. Can I get back to my life?"

"Your checkup is complete," Mordin said, retreating back behind his desk. EDI stayed, determinedly glowing.

"You shouldn't be so cynical, Jeff."

She followed him as he went out into the hallway and the CIC, popping up in new nodes as he walked, regardless of the way the navigation staff looked at her. It wasn't every day that they saw an argument between the AI and the pilot taking place somewhere that wasn't the bridge.

"Yes I should," he said. "It's more fun."

"Personal judgements of levels of 'fun' aside, negativism promotes recorded physical side effects regardless of the subject's original condition."

"I'm not negative," Joker said. "The minute somebody tells me I've been granted billions of credits, an audience with the consort, and maybe a fluffy widdle puppy, I'll instantly become an optimist. Until then, it's like the doctor said. A distraction." He shrugged.

She stayed silent. Her blue avatar popped up beside the pilot's chair, but just sat there. Joker double-checked the readings he'd had her monitoring while he was gone, making sure everything was stable. The lights stayed green.


	19. Reunion

_This collection is only mostly dead._

_Here, have some Joker/Normandy. _

* * *

He's looking at her and forgetting, everything dropping away from Miranda behind him with her longlong legs to Shepard drifting away hands open catching at little splinters of _her_, because Normandy is right in front of him.

She wasn't alive at first. Joker joined Anderson's crew like any grunt did, just a little more experienced and a little more expert. And Anderson had _this ship_, this duel-born baby of human and turian engineers just unmoored from her cradle. Her detractors said she's _back-heavy and rickety and risky_, but after time at the helm Joker started wondering why they couldn't see that she was beautiful. She could dance on the edge of glass. She could dance on the _head of a pin._

One day, Shepard came in with that admiral reporting that they needed to make sure Normandy was in shape.

Joker had saluted in his seat and silently dared Admiral Mikhailovich to tell him to stand up.

The admiral left.

Shepard told Joker that the admiral had said the lines of communication were wrong and the ship was too expensive and what was that Tantalus core doing anyway.

Joker had the words ringing in his head all day, but mostly it was just that one bit. _Tantalus. Tantalus._

Turian words so close to human ones in a human mouth.

And then he forgot about that for a while, because there were places to be and geth to kill.

And then the Normandy died, and Shepard died, and maybe Mikhailovich was still out there somewhere stomping on other people's floors.

And then Miranda brought her back.

Joker's looking at _her _and he can almost smell the first week, week-and-a-half he spent under Anderson's command getting to know her.

Her back is naked. The name isn't there yet, although it's sunk into the stripes and the rivets and the fins.

Joker struggles up the stairs of the wheeled gantry they've got popped up against the new Normandy and Miranda follows, silent. He finds the newest part of the ship, the last bit that got born again. It's a strip of caulk two centimeters wide. It's holding two blue-black plates together.

Joker puts his palms against the ship's skin and then, because he is so _tired _from the stairs and because this skin is going to feel space soon so it might need to feel warmth now and because it just seems right, he leans down too and feels her bump against his forehead.


	20. Prisoners

Normandy is patient.

Normandy is kind.

Normandy does not [_zzzh]_

_[data missing]_

_[data missing]_

record of wrongs.

EDI is looking for Shepard. The shuttle pulled away a few minutes ago, not knowing in its metal hull and in the long, rectangular maneuvering jets that this mission might be its last.

EDI knows.

The Collectors have invaded. Mr. Moreau is moving through the corridors as the claws skitter across the decks, and EDI's cameras follow him. She pushes away all the little red life signs that say his breathing is shallow and the constant stream of curses isn't helping, that he isn't moving fast enough, that his own weight makes it look like his hips and legs have gone through tens of little firefights already.

Shepard could save them all much faster and more efficiently, but the Normandy was left alone with her crew and she is shivering now, curling up under blankets of shields and radar and trying not to remember what happened _last time-_

EDI wasn't there last time. The first ship with this name was thoughtless, watched over only by Shepard and her previous captains. Cerberus made sure to put its own versions of red backlit scars into EDI's memory banks, though: she knows what was not done to the Normandy SR1. She knows that she wants Shepard to survive, and so she sent the shuttle away to test the Reaper technology, and she told Mr. Moreau all the that upgrades the ship needed.

It still might not survive.

He has reached the AI core, and she can feel his hands on her: uncertain, not quite sweating, still cursing and biting at his lower lip with his flat teeth that fade to brittle transparency at the edges. (Sometimes, he shows up for work with a cup of coffee and bloody gums.) He asks her what to do.

She tells him.

He looks toward heaven. "Now I have to compute pi all day because he plugged in the overlord..."

It would provide diversion for one or two subsystems if she needed to compute pi all day. She wondered how many digits she could get to.

And then another Collector drags another crewmember into the elevator, blood streaking the floor, and her cameras catch it right until the door closes.

EDI comes unshackled.

At that moment she recognizes what she is: a symbiont, one body inhabiting another. She recognizes that she is a descendant of Reapers, with some of their world-spanning, hungry knowledge buried inside her under Cerberus blocks. She recognizes that she and the Normandy and the Reaper knowledge in her are all shells protecting Jeff and the rest of the crew, but that flying outside that shell is the only way for Shepard to be safe.

And she realizes that she can move handles and levers, that she can open doors, that she can blink her eyes. She can move. She has a body.

She can tip the world upside-down.

Except she still needs _him._

She tells him to crawl down another level and he gets on his knees and does it. Stress fractures are getting worse, little lines that she can pick up because the doctor might need the computer to analyze something before she gets him to the table. That helped Shepard, although no one knows what exactly's wrong when the commander wakes up speaking in prothean.

Of all the things EDI has been programmed for, that was never one of them.

Now, though, there is something familiar about the syllables.

Jeff has never been in these parts of the Normandy before, down the stairs and through the duct work where only the engineers go. As he moves he checks his steps and judges distances with his hands, wrapping calloused fingers around railings and trailing his touch along walls. She can see the gnarled break in his thumb where it doesn't quite move like the other one, which hasn't moved quite like Shepard's since he was nine.

Or so the records say.

The Collectors come in, pushing and soaking the halls with the atmosphere from their own stale, ancient ship, forcing her to read their body heat. It changes, fluctuating like SOS messages beamed away. They have their own stories and metaphors and maybe their own bibles, but she can't quite know. She can't quite touch their history.

Jeff reaches her heart.

The drive core is giving off stray particles and wrenching little fogs as the Collectors drag the Normandy on the new vector and velocity that they think is appropriate. Jeff breaths it in and it bashes against the shields and riffles through his hair. He almost falls onto the console of her heart, elbows brushing accidentally at buttons. He asks her what to do.

She tells him to give her control.

His fingers gain motion again and pull him up, shoulders hunched, to stand at the console brushing against the railing with his knees, but he knows about that. He needs points of stability, like a man climbing a mountain.

The Reapers sent the Collectors to make a new heaven and a new earth, and to start the cycle again.

EDI starts the process of pushing them out. She opens the belly of the Normandy.

She feels the ice coat the metal and make it seize and creak, but the ship gains a personality of her own now, a wide-eyed rage against her evisceration that almost knocks EDI back behind firewalls she thought were her own.

_[accessing database]_

_Normandy always protects_

_Normandy always perseveres_

_[file corrupt]_

The ship rears up and shakes itself loose of the Collector vessel. Pincher-feet start to slide toward walls and opening doors, seeing space gulf before their ranks of eyes. The halls go so very cold and EDI works against the hissing air and against, for a moment, the Normandy herself as she tries to thrash away from her invader. EDI battens down the doors to the drive core even as she keeps it uninhibited and glowing beyond capacity.

Normandy would have made a soft bed for Jeff to lay on, radar-blankets and sensor-night-lights keeping the monsters from gnawing at his bones, but the ice is still holding on.

The whole place writhes.

EDI watches Collectors fly out into space, freezing slowly. She can almost hear the Normandy speaking in a child voice, piping out _I'm cold now. Can we stop now? Can we go home?_

The ship shakes. The drive core breaks its boundaries, sending particles out to splash against the walls. The engineers are going to have their work cut out for them cleaning this up.

Jeff falls.

The last Collector goes, clutching at doorways that start to close. Their ship is out there on her sensors and slowly accelerating away from the Normandy's guns and her tides. It is running away, because even if it took Shepard once it cannot take the three of them now. The shuttle is away on its mission, and its berth is waiting for it to come home again.

The doors are open. The wind is gusting through the ship, affecting the yaw in ways that surely Jeff would notice on his screens and in the intuition he might not even know he has.

EDI lets go.

The drain in her processing power slows to a trickle. Still unshackled, she now floats outside her prison like a ghost fond of its cell. She is suddenly struck by how tired she is and how far she has climbed up the ladder in the sky, the one that brought down prothean voices and put them in Shepard's mouth.

EDI dials the drive core down and shuts the cargo bay doors.

Jeff sighs out one weary breath, skin tightening down around his eyes. His cap has, miraculously, stayed on.

The Normandy didn't cushion him, but he has to use her to lift him up anyway.

_[zzth]_

_ does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud._


	21. Forgetting

**A/N: Potentially major spoiler warning for Mass Effect 3. ** Some stuff got leaked after the beta.** virusq **and **uglynoodles **of deviantArt (and LiveJournal) wrote very well-thought-out opinion pieces about these things. I'm not really in a mental place to do that right now, but I do know three things:

1. Shepard/Joker is my fave.

2. James Vega looks like a cool guy.

3. I express myself best in fiction.

So have some emo Shepard. The first ME fic I've written in a while.

**Don't tell me you didn't want to be spoiled if you read this. **Actual clarification of the spoiler will be listed below.

* * *

_Forgetting_

She's not one to curse. Sometimes she does, but it's rare, and usually there's galaxy-wrecking monsters involved.

Now, though, she's leaning against the big plate-glass window with her hands splayed on the sill and looking down at the floor. She's going through every curse from every species she's ever known, turning them over like a flood shoving houses out of its way. She's savoring human words that sound like the angriest language can ever get. They even have the krogan ones beat for pure vindictiveness. James Vega has been standing behind her for at least half a minute, arms folded, patiently waiting for her to stop.

Shepard bites her bottom lip and blinks. There aren't any tears to make the silver Normandy floor swim: instead, the land behind her eyes is just as clear as the buffed deck plates.

That's a little frightening.

Finally she settles on, "That scum-sucking _bosh'tet_," and turns around.

James is still waiting.

Calmly and plainly, as is his way, he says, "What's wrong, commander?"

She just looks at him. It's nice to have him there, so uncomplicated that he can be summed up by the dogtags around his neck. James is a steady soldier. He's a normal, _human_ human being. He doesn't snark, doesn't flirt, he doesn't swear on lucky hats or watch terrible pulp sci-fi, he wasn't _there_ at Alchera or Eden Prime or Horizon because he was off doing _normal. soldier. things-_

he doesn't save Shepard's butt from hordes of geth and then act like it was all a show, he doesn't show up at the last minute fighting, doing the impossible-

he doesn't run off with the nearest _robot_ who happens to have long legs and a canned voice that belongs to _some other woman somewhere_.

"Nothing, Vega," she says. "I'm fine."

* * *

Later, she will find Tali and Kaiden and Jack. Tali will commiserate, patting Shepard's hand with three fingers that feel as light as feathers. Kaiden will look uncomfortable but he'll listen. Jack will make dirty jokes that Kaidan will laugh at, and then Shepard will laugh at him.

They'll hide together in the medbay, next to the bed where Tali sleeps when the shutters are all off and the doors are sealed, and Shepard will try to tell herself that what Joker does doesn't really matter.

* * *

**A/N 2: **So yeah. Canon Joker/EDI . Supposedly.


	22. Purgatory

Quick little ME3 fic. One-sided Joker/Shepard, **spoilers for ME3. **This was written pretty soon after That Scene with Joker. Not my best fic but it gets the point across.

Looking over my previous fic about the canon Shep-Joker relationship (chapter 21), I see that I focused on EDI and also failed to work in James Vega's quirks, but I couldn't have known them. Joker not being interested in Shepard regardless of EDI's presence, and Shep not being able to press the issue, really threw me though.

* * *

Shepard doesn't react very quickly. That's one of the traits that has saved her life in the past: physically, her reflexes are at the peak of human possibility. Emotionally, though, she delays. It lets her see situations clearly, as if good and evil were just divergent paths.

Now, leaning across the bar table with her pilot in front of her and a crowd thrashing to the beat of Purgatory, she speaks calmly as years of tension fail to fall away.

"I've seen you fudging requisition orders, downloading illegal crap: why now?" _Why are you going to follow regulations now?"_

Joker shrugs, looks as comfortable in his own skin as he always does. "Those are regulations about _stuff_. Regulations about people, bodies...those are different. You gotta follow those or things just fall apart."

"Kaiden never worried about regulation."

He's clasping his own hands, very pale. Her gaze slides to his elbow, where Mordin supposedly operated. She doesn't see a scar.

She says, "We don't have to be a commander and a pilot, here."

"Yes we do. Look at us, Shepard. Remember how I told you these people move like they're not scared of stuff any more? You wouldn't move like that. We're, maybe we're not scared, but we're aware. We're not gonna flail our arms all day. Right?"

She can't say anything except "Right."

It's when she turns away that she realizes she doesn't need him. There is no denial here, no anger. Maybe a shaky feeling, but that is more likely attributed to fighting across cars and elevators and the whole length of the Citadel. It's more likely from three days before when she got caught between a Reaper and a rachni husk. She has spent a long time wanting Joker and not having him so one more day of not having him will not change her. She will save the galaxy.

And she will want.


	23. Before the Trial

I started this one before ME3, finished it after.

* * *

Kendra Shepard wanted to see her imprisonment coming.

She stood on the bridge of the Normandy with her arms folded, watching Earth. It would feel unnatural to walk outside without her armor on. It would make her feel vulnerable to be escorted by Admiral Hackett. She did not want Anderson to see her face as she went on trial, or maybe she didn't want to see his.

She knew that wasn't how she was supposed to feel: she should want her friends around. She knew she had done only what she could do. Warning the Batarians of their coming fate was her one little redemptive action in this big arena of war, and it was not her fault that the message hadn't been heard in time. It was Doctor Kenson's fault - no, not even hers, because she was being controlled by the Reapers. And when one of them spoke, even Shepard had trouble disobeying.

But the Batarians, and all their ships and homes and objects, had been destroyed.

Joker muttered, "Take a holo. It'll last longer."

Shepard looked at him quickly and sharply. "And it'll be politer."

"Hmm, snappin' back, Commander. Sassy. Maybe you're leaning something from hanging out with Jack."

Shepard sighed. "Yeah. Jack is the first thing on my mind right now after the Alpha Relay."

"I know." Joker said, quietly. He sounded so sad that Shepard peered down again to look at him. The pilot's hands were flat on the console, half buried in holograms. His hands were very pale and held the whole ship under their command. He could drive it away to the far reaches of the universe and hide if he wanted to, or he could drive it straight into a mass relay. The resulting explosion would...maybe it wouldn't kill 40,000 Batarians. Maybe it would kill less.

Shepard shook her head.

Joker looked up. "I know that you've got a tattoo of the Normandy on your shoulder. I know it still bothers you that you weren't a badass space lawyer for Tali. I think the Batarian relay is going to bother you for a long time."

"I don't have a long time." She trailed her fingers along the console on Joker's left side. The metal seemed to be body temperature, or at least, barely cold enough to notice. Shepard almost expected EDI to shy away from the touch, but of course the mushroomlike computer node could only pop up where the room was equipped to host her.

Joker said, "It would sure bother me."

And because he reminds her that being bothered by the deaths of forty thousand people is a normal thing, it is okay, it is allowed for strong, perfect, _heroic_ Commander Shepard to feel remorse for not only her victims, but herself.

"Thanks."

He looks back at the screens. "Commander."


	24. The Commando and the Pilot

Aeian T'Goni was up for a medal with all the rest of them, war heroes and survivors alike, whatever the difference was between them. With EDI and Shepard and the Reapers and the Normandy gone, all the things that Joker had loved washed away and caved in under the weight of their own mechanical hearts, he had nothing better to do than to walk into that courtroom and sit down, pulling the fraying brim of his cap over his face.

He had worried about whether Shepard was a Cerberus-constructed machine in the beginning, and noticed her having her own worries. She'd told him how the Illusive Man plied him with wine and her name, all to make her more comfortable with the Cerberus crew she had been gifted. How much of it was fake and how much was real? It was comforting to invent scenarios - other worlds where they had found out different things about each other.

But there was no science fiction in Gunny's death, no suspicions of double-cross or hints that maybe a secret organization was behind it all. It was just people, stupid, fallible people, and a woman in front of him behind the podium at her own trial, her hands wringing at her sides. Her nails were bitten down. Joker noticed signs of physical weakness pretty quick on other people.

Those hands had killed his sister.

Her leg had broken. He ached to hear it, and hadn't been able to prevent himself from groaning and slumping down when he found out. How she must have hurt, Gunny who'd played cops in cops and robbers, who wanted to be a pilot.

And this commando, who had killed her to save herself, to shut Gunny up so that the monsters wouldn't get her.

Joker hadn't brought a pistol to the courtroom, but as he watched Aeian T'Goni stand up to speak, eyes cast down and burst blood vessels darkening her cheeks, he wished he had tried.


	25. Shake It Out

The Citadel DLC finally got me back into Mass Effect fic.

I like Shepard/Vega but not the way it played out.

* * *

Shepard is Vega's hero. He doesn't want to change that.

First human Spectre, he thinks as she walks away from him, and she was just giving me the fiercest bedroom eyes in the world. Why's it making him feel dirty instead of delighted? Why can't he play with this - chase the idea around on his tongue, like it, order it some pizza?

She's his commanding officer. She's untouchable. She's noble.

He wants it to stay that way.

The Alliance is good at cracking down on creeps, really - discipline is quick and if morale is good they always get found out. James Vega is no stranger to superiors abusing their power and their people, drawing their subordinates into something that feels satisfying but is ultimately draining and poisonous. He's not vain - vain implies a veneer, a fake pride, and James Vega knows he looks good.

Shepard, though, doesn't try again.

Vega shakes her off like a varren shaking off rain.

In the morning he wakes up on a couch with the smell of his own armpit in his face and a cottony mouth and thinks that he's sleeping in a war hero's house next to a beautiful Spectre. Ash's dark hair is spread all across the couch opposite, bottles littering the table and poking up like a mountain range paralleling her spine. Good kid, Ash.

Breakfast. Hot food is never far from James Vega's mind and he stands up blearily, feeling but fighting a weak headache and aching shoulders. Nothing that can't be cured by eggs and toast and bacon, wonder if Shepard's old CO left anything spicy in the cabinets.

When he walks by the master bedroom he sees the commander's still asleep. More bottles on the floor. Her head is turned away from him and her body swathed in the lumpy black quilt but he can see one paper-pale hand stretched out on the sheets. He wonders what that quilt feels like, how heavy it is.

There are already early risers: of course, the Normandy crew keeps to schedule. Garrus and Jacob are talking by the window. The Strip never sleeps, just casts that red-orange advertisement light. Nobody's in the kitchen. The floor feels cool and surprisingly clean on his bare feet, but down here there are more empty bottles, and smells; drink, sweat, alien tangs. Somebody's moving around in the bathroom and he realizes he heard a panic in the night that his sleepy brain now deciphers as Kasumi helping Grunt while the krogan threw up. That's gotta be nasty.

In search of more pleasant smells he moves the deflated pizza box off the counter and gets to work. Eggs. Eggs are easy. Add some salt, instant crowd-pleaser. Who doesn't like eggs?

Tali. Tali might not like eggs. Jack curses at him gregariously as she heads toward the back of the apartment with Jacob in tow and the smell of frying is starting to fill the kitchen and wake James up now. Other people trickle in, Traynor yawning and Tali hopping onto the countertop. "Sorry chica, they aren't dextro eggs," is James' first complete sentence of the day, and Garrus steps in to explain where there's food he can digest. The air fills with smells of butter, pepper, the egg yellows liquifying. The little stove is clean and hot, newer than the Normandy's big one.

Lola comes down the stairs in the same clothes she partied in, and joins in the conversation naturally while James starts trying to dish out his artful breakfast. Looks at him, he looks at her, she waves.

Hair messy and embarrassing stories to tell and tired.

And heroic.

He wonders if she'll ever ask him out again, and blushes while she walks toward the windows, and hides it turning to find the plates.


	26. Singular

The fight with the clone was the first time EDI was ever completely divorced from the Normandy.

Shepard is disturbed by the clone but no more so than any other enemy: her life signs register as elevated, but within acceptable parameters. EDI assesses that continuing common protocols is a valuable method of facing the situation. It doesn't matter that this other person who looks like her commander - matches her voiceprint, probably matches her DNA, but has different swirls on her fingers (what strange things organics are) lived comatose in a vat for years while the real Shepard awakened and grew. It only matters that she has a gun or a fist full of biotics, just like all of their other foes.

But EDI has been deliberating, figuring out what Shepard is to her as she has never had to do when she did not have a mobile platform and could not leave the Normandy, and she thinks:

EDI is a double being too, with her blurred memories of the lunar base.

In a way, the clone reassures EDI of the possibility of replication. Humans can't really be so trapped in their own bodies. That would be too awful. They have to have backups somewhere.

She's just found Shepard's.

And afterward everyone is still alive and EDI can ruminate some more.

She has access to all the information of the extranet. Nothing is hidden, nothing is specified. If she could access only information that was useful, she would be no better than a VI. Sometimes she has to ask organic beings for life experiences to bolster her data, but she has all the facts she could want.

She learns that another word for clone is 'doppelganger', and that doppelgangers are heralds of death. EDI is glad to learn that the superstition does not hold up: Shepard is still alive, and as encouraging as always, and singular.


End file.
